


Speak no Evil

by thefilthiestpiglet



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen in the present, HYDRA Trash Party, Other, Rape Recovery, previous trash mention, trash in the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 06:22:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4908688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefilthiestpiglet/pseuds/thefilthiestpiglet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky didn't like people knowing bad things about him.</p><p>And Bucky had done a lot of Bad Things.</p><p>So Bucky left Steve on the banks of the Potomac and went to hide all the Bad Things. </p><p>----</p><p>Based off of a <a href="http://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/1634.html?thread=2993250#cmt2993250">trashmeme prompt</a> which boils down to: <br/>- Bucky hides his trash past and no one knows, so everyone thinks he's just coping with normal "being Hydra's assassin and mindwiped lots" trauma.  And most of the time Bucky seems fine.<br/>- Bucky basically deals with his trashpast by emotionally shutting down, though not necessarily dissociating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speak no Evil

The first thing that came back to him was that Steve was important.

The second thing was that his name is James Buchanan Barnes. Nickname Bucky.

The third thing was that Bucky didn't like people knowing bad things about him.

And Bucky had done a lot of Bad Things.

So Bucky left Steve on the banks of the Potomac and went to hide all the Bad Things. He was good at hiding things, and he knew where the records of the Bad Things were kept. 

By the time he finished with that, he'd been long enough out of cryo storage that memories from Before were coming back. So Bucky then spent some time checking all the public records and the Smithsonian exhibit to make sure that none of the bad things from Before had survived. There were some records from his first physical after getting out of HYDRA captivity in 1944, but the doctor who examined him was dead, Steve didn't know, and a folder from a moldy army archive was easily destroyed. He also had to destroy a few photography plates from 1936 kept in a dusty box in a wealthy old man's library. Bucky from Before wasn't as good at infiltration and elimination as he was now.

With all of the Bad Things hidden or destroyed, there was only one thing left to check. So one night Bucky knocked on Steve's door one night with a box of pizza. 

"Hey Steve, you still like your pizza with obscene amounts of garlic?"

From the way Steve hugged him, Bucky was pretty sure that Steve didn't know about any of the Bad Things. Bucky was safe. Everything was back to normal.

After he was released from the embrace, the asset calmly waited for his handler to give the order for a kiss. Or maybe to get down on his knees and beg for cock.

Instead, Steve invited Bucky inside.

\-----------------

Bucky had to go through a lot of standard processing to prove that he wasn't a brainwashed assassin, but still had the physical abilities and memory of being a brainwashed assassin. It all reminded him of reporting to Phillips during the War. 

There was also a therapist he had to talk to about his stint as HYDRA's best assassin. During the intake questions, the therapist asked him if he experienced any forms of coercion or torture other than the freezing and the mindwipes. Bucky was prepared for the question, so the flood of memories of the Bad Things didn't stop him from yawning and drawling out a bored "No." Bucky from Before probably would have added "What, you mean being flash-frozen and electro-shocked wasn't bad enough?" but he was busy remembering the feeling of his asshole fucked loose and dripping with blood and semen, so "no" was all he could manage.

The therapist soon moved onto other questions on the checklist. Did he remember all of his assignments? How did he feel about that? Those were easy to answer, even when he was remembering some of the Bad Things. The asset was always good at mission reports. 

But the therapist was clearly a bit unnerved from the matter-of-fact way Bucky described a particularly gruesome assignment. He frowned. "Well, sounds like there are certain topics you're not ready to emotionally engage with." By then Bucky'd recovered enough to manage a "well, years of electro-shock therapy'd do that to ya. I'll try better next time, doc."

The therapist's response was to hand Bucky a sheet of paper. "Given what you've experienced, I'd like you to create a list of triggers or conditioning, both to protect yourself from being accidentally triggered, and to protect those around you from the consequences." 

Bucky stared at the paper and thought about the practicality of listing "stun batons." On the one hand, they sure shocked his balls and asshole a lot while fucking him. Especially Rumlow. On the other hand, they also shocked him in Non-Bad ways when he underperformed on a mission. 

He must have been quiet too long, because the therapist told him he could work on this later and bring it back when ready. This was a clear mission objective. The asset got up and walked out calmly. If he did it right, there won't be any stun batons.

It took most of the night and a lot of unpleasant memories, but by morning Bucky had two lists: a list of triggers from the Asset Handler's Guidebook, which he's sure could be found in HYDRA archives, and a list of triggers from the Asset Secondary Function Logbook, which he's made sure couldn't be found anywhere. Then he moved what he could reasonably justify from one list to the other. For stun batons he put "electro-shock implements." He also wrote down "Mouth Click Noises that trigger Winter Solder conditioning", which seemed like a good summary for that thing that Pierce liked to do to get him on his knees with his mouth open and begging. He could probably justify that as some mission-related command. That still a left a long list on the Bad Things side, like hand-feeding, being handed insertable objects, milk, cleaning products, cold showers, lying naked on hard concrete, collars, ribbons, certain embraces, and face, hair, and genital touches.

He added "unexpected physical contact -- triggers fight response" to the Good List, and then ate the other list. This reminded him that he didn't put "being told to swallow" on the Bad List. But there's really no end to the Bad List. And even if the asset was very good at swallowing on command and *could* probably swallow an infinite list, Steve was knocking on Bucky's door asking about breakfast. 

\---------

After the requisite discussion with the therapist, Bucky shared the Good List with Steve and his friends.

Bucky liked Steve's friends. There was Sam who always had a good joke and made sure everyone had his triggers list memorized. There was Clint who understood the sniper's vantage point and the importance of good beer. Natasha gave him a look that meant she suspected his time with HYDRA wasn't that simple, but she wasn't going to bring it up without evidence, and Bucky had been thorough.

And there was Tony. Tony had so many futuristic gadgets, and gosh darn it, Bucky had always loved that stuff. At first Bucky was nervous about visiting Tony's lab -- he'd had a lot of Bad Things done to him in labs. But Tony's lab was different: everything was sleek and shiny and beeped with different noises, looking nothing at all like the bare blocky metal and black of HYDRA labs. In the Stark lab, Bucky could zone out or just enjoy the gadgets while Tony jabbered about nothing in particular and occasionally asked Bucky's opinion, which he then ignored. Sure, Bucky didn't like the part where Tony'd offer him food (blueberries and chocolates that he's stashed about the room), but Tony also didn't mind when Bucky just took the food and waited a few minutes for the next command from the Secretary. From what Bucky could tell, Tony had plenty of those quiet moments himself.

**************

Steve waited for Bucky to head out to Tony's lab before calling the others together to his living room. "Something's not right with Bucky."

"I'm not sure I'd be any more 'all right' if I'd gone through what he's gone through." Clint flashed a wry smile as he picked at a stain on his shirt, then licked it.

"Yeah, but... y'know how sometimes he'd get all quiet? Like, he'd still answer your questions and follow along with what's happening, but it doesn't feel quite right?" Steve was reassured as the others nodded. Good. He wasn't just imagining things.

"He'd snap out of it with that 'heh' sound and make a joke and pretend like nothing's happened." Sam mimicked the dry snort so well that Steve laughed in spite of himself. "I always figured he got triggered by something I said or did, though I've been trying to be more careful."

Natasha peeked her head out from the blanket that she's ensconced in -- she'd just gotten back from one of her mysterious Russia trips. "I'm pretty sure he has triggers he didn't put down. I've been trying to find more HYDRA or Soviet files, but..." She paused, and Steve saw her professional mask fall into place. "Wherever I went, Bucky had gotten to months before." 

"What do you mean? Bucky's purposely erased some of his Winter Soldier files?" Steve frowned as he considered the implications. "But we've cross-referenced all of his missions and matched them with data of when he was out of cryo..."

"Not all of our functions in the Red Room were mission-related." Natasha's voice was barely audible from underneath her blanket. Clint leaned closer and the Natasha-blanket burrowed into his shoulder. 

Steve tried to focus on the original purpose of the meeting. "Bucky'll be back in an hour. If not all of his triggers are listed, I think we can start by comparing notes: what *does* Bucky get triggered by?"

Ten minutes later, they had a rather peculiar list:

\- Steve handed Bucky a cucumber to chop for a salad. Bucky had been talking excitedly about his latest coding project, but stopped and chopped the cucumber in silence for about a minute before the inevitable "heh, are all vegetables of the future so big?" and re-launching into the superiority of Python and how much he missed the code girls from back then.

\- Whenever Clint hands Bucky a bottle of beer, Bucky'd sober up from whatever joke he was telling, and sit there holding the bottle for a minute or two, as if waiting for some instructions, before the "heh" and a joke about Prohibition.

\- Steve told Bucky to slow down and swallow his eggroll first before trying the soupy dumplings. Bucky lost all of his gusto and ate the rest of the Chinese food like it was cardboard.

\- Bucky was having fun visiting Sam's nieces, but when she showed him her Cécile American Girl doll, he got quiet. He still helped her change Cécile's outfit and fix up her hair with fancy ribbons, but it was a while before Bucky snapped back with a comment about how even the dolls nowadays had better clothes than he did as a kid.

"If it weren't for the last one, I'd say he had a food-related trigger." Sam frowned. 

"Problem is, it's all happening in his head, and we can't exactly ask him." Steve sighed. "I'll check in with Tony when I get a chance, and let's keep adding to the list as we think of more. Let's stick to reconnaissance and trigger prevention for the time being. There's gotta be a pattern here somewhere. Something that Bucky doesn't want us to know."

Steve wondered what Bucky considered worse than all of his assassination assignments. Food and dolls seemed innocuous enough.

**************

Things were getting better for Bucky. There just seemed to be less triggering things around. Clint had taken to drinking beer in pints instead of bottles, Tony's started leaving his food on the table and gesturing instead of shoving it in Bucky's face, and Steve's gotten into making lots of Thai food at home.

Bucky wondered if the others had decided that he just had some weird food hangups.

Well, as long as they didn't know about the Bad Things.

He still got triggered sometimes, but he'd gotten good at remaining mostly aware during those moments. Just ... calm. He retreated to his training as an asset. The asset could do anything under any circumstance, because the asset didn't feel anything. Once the moment passed, Bucky'd be back to normal. Being in the asset mindset was helpful when things got too much, but Bucky liked that he could choose not to be the asset. Bucky liked being normal.

Sometimes the trigger happened in private. Maybe when he was watching a movie in his room and a scene reminded him of how the Secretary would always dab the others' cum on his lips. Or when he opened his window and suddenly smelled a perfume that Agent Mercer liked to wear as she choked him and shocked his balls. In those moments Bucky didn't need the asset's calm. He'd let the memories come back full force and even allow himself the luxury of feeling all the emotions denied the asset. He'd laugh or cry or scream or whatever. It was cathartic. Sometimes his pillow would be so wet with tears that he'd have to flip it over for sleeping. He always made sure to screamed in silence. No one should know. Bad Things didn't happen to normal people, and Bucky liked being normal.

It was getting better.

**************

It was Steve who noticed the shower issue, but only because him and Bucky shared an apartment. Steve enjoyed taking nice long warm showers in the morning, especially after one of the nights where he couldn't stop dreaming of ice. But the showers at the gym always started cold and never got that hot, so he always rushed through them -- just rinse off the sweat and head home. But for Bucky, it seemed to be the opposite. His morning showers were hot but perfunctory, but his gym showers always lasted a while. And now that Steve was looking, he noticed that Bucky'd do that grunt noise of his in the gym shower. Steve would also hear movements from Bucky's shower stall.

Something was going on, and for once it's not staying in Bucky's head.

After some consideration, Steve decided to investigate -- it wasn't like he hadn't seen Bucky naked ever since they were kids, and the bit of impropriety might help unlock the larger mystery of Bucky's incomprehensible triggers. So the next time they hit the showers after a workout, he peeked.

He wasn't prepared to see Bucky shivering, his cock hard, braced against the shower wall with his butt jutting out and three metal fingers jammed into his ass and opening it up to the point of gaping. For a brief moment Steve wondered if Bucky had always masturbated like that, and whether Bucky had some weird food kink. Then Steve looked at Bucky's face. Bucky seemed to be shaking his head, screaming and begging no. Sobs racked through Bucky's body, all in silence. This wasn't some sex fantasy. Bucky was reliving a nightmare.

Steve spent a long time in his own shower after that. By the time he stepped out, Bucky was clothed, cheery, and eyeing him curiously. "You okay, Steve? Did I work you too hard on the mats today?"

"Nah, just got in the shower late because I had to deal with some gym membership paperwork." Now wasn't the time to confront Bucky. And as Steve watched Bucky excitedly stop for some jelly doughnuts on the way home, Steve wondered if he'd just imagined the whole thing.

Steve resolved to call an emergency meeting as soon as possible. 

\---------  
"So you're saying that HYDRA probably force-raped him? Repeatedly?" Of course Clint ended up being the blunt one. They were sitting in Bruce's living room in the Avengers tower while Bucky hung out with Tony in the downstairs lab.

"And other types of sexual abuse, yes." Steve nodded, "But we can't find any records, and it's not a confrontation I can make without any corroborating evidence." Now all those innocuous triggers seemed horrifying in retrospect. What *did* HYDRA do with cucumbers and beer bottles?

"You won't find any. He's good." Natasha was all business today, dressed in a neat Black Widow outfit and carefully sorting through her weapons collection. She had a mission tomorrow. Steve wondered what happened in the Red Room that she didn't want to talk about, either. 

"So ... what can we do? He should really be talking to someone about this..." Bruce frowned. "Maybe I can..."

"How about nothing?" A screen flickered into existence in the middle of the room.

"Tony? Aren't you with Bucky right now? You shouldn't..." Steve frowned.

"Under control, Cap. I'm testing out an empty suit. It's walking around the lab upstairs, doing a remarkable impression of me, if I might say so myself. Bucky's munching on some cherries and looking at a new Starkplane schematic. I asked for some design feedback and he takes that seriously." Tony's voice had a hint of admiration as he said, "Guy has a great sense for this stuff."

Tony turned to flick something. "Here, happy now?" A parallel screen popped up next to the one with Tony's face, showing a live feed of the lab with exactly what Tony'd just described. 

"Anyway, I think you all should butt out of Bucky's business."

Steve tried to hold his temper as he thought about Bucky screaming in silence. "Tony, you weren't there. It was ... bad. He really needs to see someone. He needs someone to help him deal with this."

"Says who? Sounds like he's dealing with it just fine."

"No he's not. It was like this before, too. He didn't tell me what happened with Zola. If I'd known, I would have..." Steve couldn't finish the sentence. There were too many things that he should have done for Bucky back then. If only he'd known.

"Cap, this isn't about you and your weird self-righteous-guilt thing. You can't go around flinging people's secrets in their face just because it'd make YOU feel better."

Was that what he was doing? Steve thought back to what he witnessed, and the pain on Bucky's face. "But what Bucky's doing isn't healthy..." 

"Look, speaking as someone who spent YEARS dealing with his issues by getting drunk off my ass and pushing away all of the people I cared about, I think Bucky's doing pretty good for himself. Sure, his coping methods aren't healthy, but they aren't exactly unhealthy either. Just give the man his privacy."

"But..."

"Is he pushing you away in other ways?"

"No, but..."

"Are his episodes getting shorter?"

"I ... I guess..." Steve tried to remove his own guilt and worry from the equation and examine Bucky's recent behavior objectively. 

"So he's dealing with it in his own way. Let him be and keep an eye on him."

Steve scratched his head, then looked around the room. Bruce was looking thoughtful, Sam and Clint shrugged, and Natasha had actually relaxed a bit since Tony started talking. Then he looked at Bucky through the live-feed: calm, focused, and relaxed, just the way he'd looked back in the 30s when he was helping his Pop fix the family car.

"Fine." Maybe Tony had a point. "We'll just keep tracking and avoiding triggers."

"Great. Oh, I'm thinking of throwing a party on the roof tonight. Nothing much..." Tony was already turning away and waving off the screen. Just before the camera of the lab flickered off, Steve could see the Tony-bot say something to Bucky, and Bucky laughing and throwing a cherry pit at the Tony-bot.

Steve felt Sam's hand on his shoulder. Maybe it'll be all right.

\----------

Bucky relished how much better things were now. Back during the war, he followed Steve straight back into battle against HYDRA, and every base they took down, every lab door he had to kick down, just made things worse. He didn't really have the time that he had now to figure things out. 

The time and the space, really.

Steve decided to move into the Avengers tower -- they got a whole floor! What's even better, was that Bucky got to design and set up his room exactly how he wanted. Tony even gave him access to the security and electronics schematics of the floor, so Bucky made sure that his and Steve's bedrooms were both camera-free and sound-proof. He kept the life sign monitors on, though. Bucky knew how easy it was to infiltrate and eliminate.

With his room properly set up, Bucky went out and discreetly got some various shackles and dildos and tucked them away in a hidden corner of his bedroom. It's been weeks since cold showers stopped bothering him, and now not only did he feel ready to tackle some of the other Bad Things, he also had a safe place where he could be as loud as he wanted. With all of this time and space to himself, he's been needing the asset's calm less and less.

And the rest of the time, when he's with Steve and the others, no one knew any of the Bad Things about Bucky. This meant that he could just be normal James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky liked being normal, and he was starting to feel normal, too.

Well, as normal as an ex-brainwashed assassin with a rad cybernetic arm could be.

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of Cap fics use "the asset" as a way to show Bucky dissociating or losing his sense of self, so I want to clarify here that I was trying to show Bucky calling on certain aspects of his asset training to cope, but that he still maintains his sense of self, especially as the fic progresses. It's like saying "okay, time to be professional" and less "going blank". Although I guess if I'm having to explain it here I probably didn't do a good job of it.
> 
> I have a particular fondness for Bucky & Tony friendship stuff, which I don't get to see a lot of in Stucky fandom, so I kind of shoehorned it in here. :)
> 
> As usual, I'm on [tumblr](http://thefilthiestpiglet.tumblr.com), and most of my stuff is either buckynat or 4F.


End file.
